2024-09-05 19:55 update: 2024-09-05, 19:59
Fot. PAP/Artur Reszko
The Polish government will extend the operation of the buffer zone at the country's border with Belarus by 90 more days, the interior minister has said.
Poland established a 60-km buffer zone on its border with Belarus in mid-June to stem the inflow of irregular migrants from Belarus.
"At the Interior Ministry, we're finalising work on a new regulation on the matter, which will come into force on September 11," Tomasz Siemoniak said in the south-eastern city of Kielce on Thursday.
"The zone has brought concrete, good results," he continued. "It is first of all targeting human traffickers, who pick up people smuggled across the border."
Siemoniak also said that the border fence that Poland had built over recent years would be further strengthened, adding that "new solutions will prevent easy border crossing."
The previous government introduced the buffer zone for the first time in 2021 after Belarus decided to create migration pressure on the EU's eastern borders in retaliation for sanctions that Brussels imposed on Minsk. The Belarusian strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, invited thousands of mostly Middle Eastern and African migrants to his country under the false promise of easy access to the EU across the Polish and Lithuanian borders. (PAP)
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